All Afghanistan
Afghanistan has seen better days
By: Robert Fisk Source: CounterPunch The news from Afghanistan is very bad. No one says that, of course. President Ghani has a “national unity government” that “supports a strong partnership with the United States”, according to Barack Obama two months ago. Sure, Kunduz was captured by the Taliban – but then the Afghans got it back (though minus one American-bombed hospital, along with most of its patients and doctors). Sure, Sangin was captured by the Taliban – but now the Afghan army is fighting to get it back. But didn’t more than a hundred British soldiers die to hold Sangin? Sure, but American troops in Iraq died to hold and keep Mosul – and Mosul is now the home of the Isis leader,...
133 children die a day in Afghanistan
According to available figures, about 73 percent of people in Afghanistan lack access to clean drinking water and 95 percent do not have access to sufficient sanitation. As a result, diarrhoeal diseases are responsible for the death of 48,545 children every year in the country. Lack of access to clean drinking water and sanitation is a chronic problem not only in rural areas, but also in most of the Afghan cities which are developing — unplanned — at a rapid rate. Even in the Afghan capital, Kabul, barely 25 percent of people, according to some reports, have direct access to potable water. The overall majority of people in Afghanistan do not have access to running water, they fetch water...
US soldier kills 16 Afghan civilians in shooting spree
A US soldier has killed more than a dozen civilians in a shooting spree in southern Afghanistan before being detained, officials say. A member of the Kandahar provincial council who visited the site of the shooting in Panjwai district told Al Jazeera that at least 16 civilians were killed when the soldier left his base early on Sunday morning and opened fire. The Kandahar governor’s office put the number of killed civilians at 15. “Eleven members of my family are dead. They are all dead,” Haji Samad, an elder from Panjwai district, told the AFP news agency. Captain Justin Brockhoff, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), could not...
